1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to coordinating information between a merchant and an outside vendor that provides a web-based electronic billing service for customers of the merchant. More specifically, the present invention relates to a system and method for automatically notifying the outside vendor of a change in customer status when a customer contacts the merchant to change her service but fails to contact the outside vendor.
2. Background of the Invention
Enabled by the development of the Internet, more and more merchants are offering their customers the ability to access billing account information and to pay bills online. Often, to provide this service, merchants contract with web-based billing and payment service providers (referred to herein as “e-billing vendors”). Instead of issuing paper bills, merchants electronically forward billing information to the e-billing vendors, who then post periodic bills on the Internet. Once posted on the Internet, the e-billing vendors provide secured access through which customers can review their own accounts, but not the accounts of other customers. E-billing vendors also often manage electronic fund transfers between customer financial accounts and merchant accounts. In dispensing with paper-based checks, these e-billing vendors, such as CheckFree®, enable customers to complete such transactions as paying bills online, accessing full payment histories, scheduling payments in advance, scheduling variable and recurring payments, reviewing pending payments, authorizing payments to particular merchants, and storing bills electronically for future reference.
For enrollment in an electronic billing and payment service, the merchant instructs its existing customers to log onto the e-billing vendor's website and register for the service. The customer designates the financial institution that will receive and pay the customer's bills, and the particular financial account number through which fund transfers will be processed. The financial institution is any business that supports electronic billing and payment, such as online banks, Internet portals, brokerage credit unions, and personal finance software packages. As a part of enrollment, the e-billing vendor furnishes the customer with a user identification (“user ID”) and password for secured access to the website. The e-billing vendor also establishes a mailbox for the customer, accessible only by using the user ID and password. This mailbox serves as the location at which the e-billing vendor presents bills for payment, and the customer reviews and pays bills.
Once the customer completes registration, the e-billing vendor forwards the registration information to the merchant in the form of a request-for-enrollment file. The merchant validates and edits the request-for-enrollment file, qualifies the customer, and returns a response file to the e-billing service reporting either that the customer's account is ready for electronic fund transfers or that the request for enrollment is denied (e.g., if the account number is invalid or if the enrollee is not a customer of the merchant). If enrollment is accepted, the merchant activates the e-billing capabilities for the customer's account and modifies its internal accounting system to forward the customer's bills to the e-billing vendor, rather than to the customer by mail. For tracking purposes, the merchant and e-billing vendor generally use the service account number assigned to the customer by the merchant, e.g., in the case of a telephone company, the service account number would be the customer's telephone number. The e-billing vendor associates this account number with the previously registered user ID, password, financial institution, financial account number, and mailbox of the customer.
Following enrollment, for each billing cycle (e.g., monthly), the merchant electronically forwards the billing information in a bill image data file to the e-billing vendor, preferably using file transfer protocol (FTP). By reading the account number associated with the bill image data file, the e-billing vendor locates the customer's mailbox. The e-billing vendor then web-enables the bill image data file by attaching hypertext markup language (HTML) commands and posts the bills to the mailbox for presentment and payment. Once posted, the customer can review the charges and approve the transfer of funds from her financial account to the merchant. For quality control, the e-billing vendor confirms during each billing cycle that billing information is received for each active enrolled customer, to assure that each customer can review and pay bills in a timely manner.
Because a merchant typically issues bills to different customers on different billing cycles such that bills go out every day, merchants transfer billing information to the e-billing vendor on a daily basis. As a part of the tracking and quality control functions, the e-billing vendor and merchant provide each other with error reports for each daily transfer. The error reports detail instances in which, for example, customer accounts do not match or cannot be located. Although the error reports enable the merchant and the e-billing vendor to identify mismatched account numbers and to make the appropriate corrections to synchronize the systems, the reports require a manual review by the system operators and do not eliminate the need for further personal communication between the merchant and e-billing vendor to rectify the problems.
The principal source of errors in these daily transfers of billing information is customer-requested changes in service that affect account numbers. Because the merchant and the e-billing vendor rely on the account number to synchronize a transfer, if a customer desires a change in service that affects her account number, both the merchant and also the e-billing vendor must be notified to ensure consistent billing. For such a situation, e-billing vendors instruct customers to always contact both the merchant and also the e-billing vendor to report the change. In this manner, the merchant knows to issue any subsequent billing based on the requested change and the e-billing vendor knows what type of billing information to expect from the merchant. Two typical examples of changes in service that affect the account number are account termination and account number change. To better illustrate these changes in the context of a particular industry, the following discussion addresses these service changes in the context of the telecommunications industry, in which an account termination is a disconnected telephone line and an account number change is a change of phone number (account number).
If a customer follows the merchant's instructions, both the e-billing vendor and the merchant know that an account number has been canceled or changed, and can coordinate their billing processes accordingly. FIGS. 1 and 2 illustrate this situation in which a conscientious customer contacts the merchant and the e-billing vendor to coordinate a disconnected line (FIG. 1) or an account change (FIG. 2). The reference numerals in FIGS. 1 and 2, as well as FIGS. 3–6, indicate the order in which the steps occur.
Despite the merchant's best efforts in instructing customers, customers frequently request the change from the merchant but neglect to contact the e-billing vendor. FIG. 3 shows an example of this scenario for account termination. If a customer contacts the telephone company to disconnect her telephone line but does not inform the e-billing vendor of the change, when the next billing cycle comes due, the e-billing vendor will expect the usual bill from the telephone company, but the telephone company will forward nothing. As a result, an error will appear on the error report and the e-billing vendor will have to contact the telephone company to investigate the missing billing information. This investigation is a burdensome clerical task.
Similarly, FIG. 4 shows an example of the problematic scenario for account number change. Here, a customer contacts only the telephone company to switch her service from one telephone number to another—in effect canceling an account and opening another. As a result, during the next billing cycle, the e-billing vendor will receive billing information for the new account that it has not registered and does not recognize. In addition, the e-billing vendor will be looking for missing billing information for the cancelled account. Once again, the error report will indicate the mistakes and the e-billing vendor will have to waste resources contacting the merchant to coordinate the changes.
Therefore, because customers inevitably fail to contact both the merchant and the e-billing vendor when requesting a service that affects an account number, the merchant needs a way of automatically notifying the e-billing vendor without resorting to manually reviewed error reports and post hoc clerical fixes.